Skip to main content

Oasis

Yesterday she stood and stared blankly when people greeted her on the street. Today she waves Hi, unprompted, even to strangers way across the street who haven't noticed her yet.

Last week she developed her very own Silly Walk, a la John Cleese, with her left foot way up high in the air at every step. Since then she's been practicing walking backwards, and today she added a Groucho Marx strut with her knees and hips out in front.

All of a sudden yesterday we turned the page in her My First Animal Book and she saw the gorilla, and she beat her fists against her chest, just like I had showed her days ago.

She can slide all by herself now on the big twisty slide. She can climb all the way up the steep steps, sit down at the top, scoot to the edge, get brave, and slide down to where I am waiting. And when she can't quite get brave enough, which happens about half the time, she can turn around and climb back down the stairs.

I cannot get enough of Zoe. At 13 months she is endlessly fascinating. She learns and develops so fast I can barely keep up with the things she can do by herself.

And it is wonderful to me that I've been able to be with her almost constantly for the last month. We've spent the last few days meeting new babysitters to prepare for the craziness that looms ahead in the calendar, so I am acutely aware of the blissful oasis we're enjoying right now.

As things begin to heat up I'll be making hard choices every day about the best way to spend my time, and I won't have the luxury of getting everything done that I want to. My goal is to keep enjoying her. Although there will be long weeks of late night commutes and multiple daily quintet gigs and meetings and rehearsals and frantic cramming-style practicing, I want my time with Zoe to stay this magical. I want to watch every new skill as it appears. This is so much fun!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Blog has MOVED

 Have you been waiting ... and waiting ... and WAITING for a new Prone Oboe post?  Don't wait here anymore!  The blog has moved to https://jennetingle.com/prone-oboe/  and will not be updated here on Blogger anymore.  Please come and check me out there!  I love you all - stay safe out there!  Jennet

How Do You WISH You Could Describe Your Reeds?

In Reed Club last Monday, we took a moment before we started scraping to set some intentions.  We each said one word - an adjective to describe what we WANTED our reeds to be.  An aspirational adjective. Efficient was a word that came up, and Consistent . Dark and Mysterious . Mellow . Predictable .  Trustworthy .  Honest .  BIGGER . Reed affirmations actually felt helpful - both in the moment and in the results we found as we worked.  I don't know why that surprises me - I set intentions at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of the month, at the beginning of a run, in the morning before I work.  I love a good affirmation.  I love WORDS.  But I'd sort of forgotten about the possibility of applying one to the mundane work of reed-making.   You don't have to know exactly how to GET to that result.  But having clarity in your mind about what that result is?  Helps you to stop going down unhelpful rabbit holes...

On the generosity of Instagram practice accounts

Classical musicians are trained to make it perfect. To make all the notes correct, to make it sound like the CD, to do it the way everyone else has done it. The only way to shine is to be BETTER - which means cleaner, more in tune, more perfect. We DO NOT SHIP until it’s perfect, which is why so many people struggle with performance anxiety and stage fright. Live is scary because you can’t control how perfect it is. But here’s what the kids are doing, over on Instagram. They are making “practice accounts” and sharing their work in progress. They are sharing snippets of pieces, little technical etudes, minute-long snatches of what is happening. They are sharing the messy middle. The first magic in this is that the process of recording yourself, listening to what you’re doing, making judgements for yourself about what is good ENOUGH to share, trying again to make the snippet REPRESENT where you are in the journey - that PROCESS is making you better. The second magic is that seeing your ...